Carl Malartre

Tax wealth not work

[Carl Malartre @Malartre]

When we protect the super-rich from wealth taxes, the financial burden just shifts to you. Govs are left with 1️⃣ Raise taxes on work 2️⃣ Cut public services.

Opposing wealth taxes on $20M + just means your own work taxes go up, services go down and your kids can't buy assets.

[Carl Malartre @Malartre]

Put a few more billions into this please

[Misha Glouberman @mishaglouberman]

I put eight years of Fitbit data into Claude. It spent a couple of hours analyzing everything, looking for correlations, etc.

What it found:

When I stay up late, I don't get as much sleep

[Carl Malartre @Malartre]

“Bad system” - Tobi

[‏ً @omgsidewalks]

Okay how about this: No more billionaires. None. After you reach $999 million, every red cent goes to schools and health care. You get a trophy that says, "I won capitalism" and we name a dog park after you.

[Carl Malartre @Malartre]

If Joseph asked why 5 times, Toyota style, he would discover the reason is probably Eisenhower administration, CIA and a little $7B company, inflation adjusted, named United Fruit Company.

[Joseph Carlson @joecarlsonshow]

Guatemala is one of the most beautiful places on earth. It's full of dramatic landscapes, pristine beaches, lush forests, world-class lakes. It's so pretty, in fact, if you were to rate it, it would safely rank next to Norway, New Zealand, Switzerland, Italy, and other travel destinations.

Guatemala is also full of natural resources. It has excellent land for agriculture, mountains and rivers for hydropower, large amounts of forest, minerals, and access to two oceans.

Guatemala also has a GDP of about $6,000 per person. That means the average Guatemalan has 7% of the wealth of the average American. It's considered one of the poorest countries in the world.

You may wonder, if it's so beautiful and so naturally full of resources, why isn't it more prosperous?

The biggest factor by far is a lack of strong institutions and rule of law. Guatemala does not have strong courts, reliable contract enforcement, secure property rights, or a stable environment for businesses to operate. And as a result, if someone has money to invest, they will invest it somewhere else, in some country that does have stable institutions.

Businesses, and the broader economy, rely on stable environments and strong institutions. So a business owner knows that their investment will be kept safe after they make it.

This is part of the reason I don't like people like the GTA extortionist leaker or Luigi Mangione. You will never see me defend these types of people. It's not about defending Take Two or UnitedHealthcare. It's about being against anarchy and lawlessness. The reason everyone here has such a high standard of life is precisely because we live in a place where this type of behavior isn't tolerated, accepted, or celebrated.

Yet I see the US, at least to some degree, starting to accept it. People are increasingly celebrating and defending anarchists and criminals. They do so under the guise of standing up against a "billion-dollar" company, as if a company's market cap exceeding $1 billion gives some special pass to do whatever terrible thing you want.

I'm not going to follow that path. I actually recognize how good we have it in the US and the factors that make it possible. And I don't want it to change for the worse.

And my suggestion to these people who hate all the billion-dollar companies is to move to Guatemala, a place where there are exactly zero publicly traded companies exceeding a billion-dollar market cap.

[Carl Malartre @Malartre]

But I want it fresh..

[Johnny Oberg @JohnOberg]

Just when you think we've run out of ways to be cruel to the animals we eat, someone invents this. 😡

Can you imagine the claustrophobia, confusion, & terror this poor #fish will endure? 😢

[Carl Malartre @Malartre]

We prefer one long and dangerous road in Canada, which we can use with a $30K - $70K living room on wheel that we resell every 6 years.

[Randy Olson @randal_olson]

German rail runs 1,773 trains at once during evening rush and 63 at three in the morning.

The map follows every one through a full day, split into high speed, intercity, regional, and night service.

[Teddy (T.M.) Brown @TM_Brown]

It’s interesting that a lot of the most visible counter messaging about data center resistance from the tech industry has been “you’re all illiterate morons.”

[BuccoCapital Bloke @buccocapital]

Guys who live in areas with restrictive zoning who use political pressure to push housing supply, industrial projects and flight paths into poor neighborhoods:

“Why do people hate data centers? I don’t get it. Where is their sense of civic duty to their fellow Americans?”

[Urban Cycling Institute 🚲  @fietsprofessor]

After decades of doing everything to retrofit our streets, cities and societies around the private car, there is only one conclusion. It just doesn't work. If only we had an alternative. If only... 🚲

—#London (📹 by @PeterStuart3)

[Carl Malartre @Malartre]

they are so scared

[Paul Graham @paulg]

If the Chinese government were sufficiently organized, they'd be funding opposition to data centers in the US. But the Chinese government is very organized. So they presumably already are.

[Kevin Mak @kevin__mak]

Hands down, the most important skill is investing is the ability to change your mind.

There’s nothing more important than that, and there are so many investors that are incapable of doing it.

And realistically it’s not a binary skill, there’s always room for improvement.

The number one tell that you’re bad at it is when you call someone else for doing it.

[BuccoCapital Bloke @buccocapital]

AI breaks the social contract of Web 2.0. Web 2.0 used your data to create a better more contextualized service that was free and enjoyable. Fair trade and a good deal

AI is using your data to take your job and help airlines extract more money from you and ensuring you never speak to a human in tech support ever again. Bad deal!

[Brent Toderian @BrentToderian]

Fewer cars. Less driving. Better cities. This isn’t rocket surgery.

[Carl Malartre @Malartre]

Always framed at "breakneck speed or die"

[Paul Graham @paulg]

Preventing companies from building data centers in America wouldn't slow down the rate of progress in AI. It would merely slow down the rate of progress in AI in America.

[Carl Malartre @Malartre]

@joecarlsonshow A product becomes illegal if the company publicly markets it as safe while internally knowing it causes severe harm. This is the legal framework used to sue Big Tobacco in the 1990s. It's not that hard.

[Carl Malartre @Malartre]

If Joseph was president, we would have no seat belts, padded dashboards, and shatter-resistant windshields.

[Joseph Carlson @joecarlsonshow]

So meta is being sued for being "too addicting".

Question, what is the right amount of addicting?

If a good movie is 3 hours long, is that too much, should the government put a cap on movie length to 2 hours and 45 minutes? If you play a video game for 4 hours, should the government step in on that too for teens?

I'm just wondering where exactly Meta magically crossed the line in going from being an engaging and entertaining product people want to keep using to a "too" addicting product where the government decides to pull them back.

What is the legally accepted amount of 'addictiveness' in this case? Anyone care to explain where that arbitrary line should be drawn?

[Carl Malartre @Malartre]

does not take a phd

[PoIiMath @politicalmath]

In the last year, American tech companies have laid off 170,000 workers with the explicit claim that these cuts are due to AI

Compare this to 1,547 new data center jobs

Gosh, I wonder why people have soured on data centers in the last 12 months

[BuccoCapital Bloke @buccocapital]

Hmm maybe VCs should not have gleefully, repeatedly, loudly, celebrated that the “investment TAM for AI is all of white-collar labor”

[Johnny Oberg @JohnOberg]

Just like dogs, pigs wag their tails when they’re happy. 🐷🐶

Pigs feel, love, and connect. Can you see them differently now? [video: @blindspotanimalsanctuary]

[Carl Malartre @Malartre]

Aviran likes black or white position with no nuances.

[Aviran Vargas @AviranV]

Want to be anti data center? Here is the pledge.

• No streaming
• No online banking
• No cloud photos
• No GPS
• No remote work
• No email
• No card payments
• No weather alerts
• No 911 dispatch

Sign it. Then tell me data centers are the problem.

[Albert Wenger 🌎🔥⌛ @albertwenger]

Tech: AI will take over most jobs creating a permanent underclass
Also tech: We are building tons of huge data centers to accelerate AI
Somehow also tech: How dare you fools object to data centers?